We’ve safely and successfully moved to our new datacenter, and all is back up and running.  Again, sorry for the interruption; now, watch us grow!!

One of the features that people like most about Raptr is our ability to automatically announce your playing status and achievements to the networks of your choice in real-time. Organizing some gaming time with friends used to be really difficult but we hope our unique integrations have helped more spontaneous gaming sessions arise.

When we launched, we started with Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed updates. Then we added the ability to syndicate your Spore and Warhammer specific achievements. As part of our effort to support Raptr players on their platforms of choice, we’ve added syndication options for Ping.fm and Plurk. What’s particularly cool with Ping.fm is that it can be used to update dozens of networks including MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, hi5, and Multiply. Like everything else on Raptr, once you set it up, it’s completely automatic.

All of these messages are customizable. Some of us at Raptr only send updates to Facebook while others choose to syndicate their play activity but not other information. We believe everyone should be able to specify how much or how little they choose to utilize the social network integrations.

While we’re mentioning Twitter, you might want to follow us there. We’re always adding more support on Raptr so if your favorite network isn’t supported yet, let us know!

We have always wanted you to be able to put your own stamp on Raptr, and with today’s release, you can both customize and contribute to Raptr.

– Themes –

If you find the Raptr orange hard on your eyes, you now have the ability to pick your own theme for your profile page.  Select from themes like World of Warcraft, Spore, Mario Kart, Call of Duty, etc., and watch our UI transform to your whims.  Select and change your theme from the bottom of the Account Settings page.  In addition to adding many more themes in the future, themes are just the first of many upcoming customization features we’re working on – stay tuned for more.

– Game Submission –
With thousands of games on dozens of platforms, we pride ourselves in having one of the most comprehensive game catalogs out there. Although we add new games everyday, we recognize that we may be missing some of your favorite games.  If you search for a game and don’t find what you’re looking for, we’ve added the ability to for you to submit game requests to Raptr. Now you can submit that obscure Commodore 64 game you want to mark as “loved”.

– Filter by Platform and Add Games Easier –
Tired of wading through pages of games to find one you own?  Want to search for XBox games only?  Our latest search enhancement helps you find your games more easily by allowing you to show only games on specific platforms. We have also made it much simpler to add games to your wishlist or library. Like themes, these changes are just the first of many others planned to help everyone find and add their games as easily as possible.

As always, we’re very interested in your feedback, via the Feedback slider on Raptr pages or our Forums.

You spoke and we listened. As of today, you’ll be able to track your Warhammer Online characters in your Raptr profile. Once you enter your character(s), we automatically track your characters’ items, levels, and Renown in your feeds for all you friends to see. So if you hit Level 40 before any of your friends, they’ll know about it. Of course, we created a custom module for your characters, so visitors to your profile page can check them out and see how you’re doing.

Timezone Support

For those of you not in the Pacific time zone, we’ve also added a timezone option that will update all charts to reflect your time zone. Simply go to your Account Settings page and select the proper time zone. Now you’ll know for sure when your friends around the world are playing Rock Band 2 at midnight in your own time zone.

Search Improvements

We’ve also made some big behind the scenes improvements to our search engine. First, we made the button prettier and easier to understand that you can change what you’re searching directly from the header. We made the search engine much faster, so if your friends joined only a little while ago, they should show up in search results in just a few minutes. Last but not least, we added way more information to the index, so you can now search for things like gamertags and character names and you’ll be able to find them in Raptr. So if you had a great time playing Halo 3 with “osunick” on Xbox Live, simply search for “osunick” in player search and you’ll be able to see if they’re on Raptr.

The FAQ has also been updated with answers to the most frequently asked questions from our community, so please check it out if you have questions. If we haven’t answered one of your burning questions, shoot us a feedback message via the “Beta Feedback” widget on Raptr, or post a message in our forums. We read every bit of feedback we get and it helps us decide what to do next, so please let us know what you think!

We’d like to think our launch last week was the biggest gaming news this weekend but there’s little doubt that the real news was the launch of Will Wright and Maxis’ much anticipated Spore. If you’ve been playing it, you’ll no doubt have created a ton of creatures and wonders to share with other worlds and civilizations.

Of course, we here at Raptr want to help you share these legendary lifeforms with your friends and have been diligently integrating Spore related features. You may have seen some of them pop up already.

Here are some of the things we’ve added since Spore launched yesterday:

• we automatically track Spore gameplay on Mac or PC when you have the Raptr client running
• we will update your activity feed with Spore gameplay
• when you add your Spore screen name we can automatically update your feed when you create new creatures or even when you make a revision to a creature
• your creatures can be viewed in a Spore module on your profile page
• any achievements you unlock in Spore can be shared with your friends automatically
• as with anything else we sync with, you can optionally send updates on your social networks when any Spore event occurs

We can’t wait to see what you all create with this incredible game and creation engine! As usual, if you have any feedback, please let us know in our forums.